Partnering Within Business
By Alan Patching
Many marriages fail in western society. I believe, for exactly the same reasons as these marriages fail, many intra-workplace relationships either fail or do not reach their full potential, and the organisation and the individuals suffer as a result.
Get the relationships within the organisation right and synergy usually results. When this happens, productivity and profitability increases are the usual very welcome consequences.
So how do we get the relationships right?
One way is to introduce our human capital to the principle of Partnering. Partnering is one of the most effective communication/relationship strategies available to organisations.
Partnering is nothing more than a strategy that assists people within an organisation to work together in a highly effective manner.
It involves some very simple principles, most of them easily understood in isolation. However, seldom is the power of their being used as a complete strategy even remotely understood.
The principles are as follows:
1. Understanding
This involves identifying and discussing the common goals and objectives (work practices, communication style, manner, dealing with customers, etc etc.) that you share with the people with whom you are entering into a Partnering arrangement. Equally importantly, it involves people clearly understanding the areas where they have different views and approaches.
Understanding in the Partnering context comes from formal, open (and often facilitated) discussion –dialogue between the people entering the Partnering arrangement, and concludes with the scheduling of areas of commonality and those in which differences of opinion exist and from where problems are most likely to rise in future.
2. Problem Areas Strategy
Potential problem areas having being identified, the Partnering philosophy promotes establishing at the start of a project or task a means of dealing with issues that might arise in an atmosphere of calm rather than waiting until problems do arise during the course of the project and trying to resolve them in a sea of emotion.
3. Escalation
History has shown that Partnering recognises that a broader perspective is required to solve many problems within organisations which really arise from personality clashes or inappropriate defence of positions. The broader perspective can be gained using an "Escalation System". This involves identifying people within an organisation with the skills, experience and position to facilitate the resolution of conflict and certain other problems before they get out of hand.
In a contractual situation this could be a representative from either side of the contractual arrangement. In an internal situation it could be a qualified counsellor from the Human Resources Department or even an externally appointed person.
The "Escalation System" quite often will have two or three layers in it, depending the type of project etc. and may even involve the CEOs of a couple of organisations at its highest level. As well as identifying the levels of the escalation process, it is important to identify the triggers (such as a dispute continuing without resolution at one level for a certain time period) at which a matter will be raised to the next level of the dispute resolution hierarchy.
4. Charter
There is a strong connection between integrity and the addition of our signatures to documents. I therefore believe that the real success of the Partnering system lies in the Partnering Charter, which is a simple document of no more than a couple of pages which schedules the identified areas of agreement between the people involved in a particular Partnering arrangement, together with those identified areas of disagreement. It goes on to schedule the method agreed for dealing with problems and the agreed "Escalation System" including the parties nominated to be involved in this system.
5. Review
It is difficult to fix something if you don't even know its broken. The success of Partnering will depend, to a large extent, on regular reviews of the system during the course of its application. The review should involve a number of people and should occur at regular intervals and not only when problems arise. It is primarily about risk management and avoiding rather than resolving disputes. For larger team situations, change the review panel frequently but always do so on a manner that provides for overlap of membership. Expect the review system to identify key emerging problem areas and respond quickly with further dialogue or workshops run by specialists etc.
That's Partnering in overview. I hope this article has kindled interest in the subject as a great relationship and conflict management tool for any corporate environment.
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